


Chance and a Black Dog

by AdamantSteve



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Depression, Fix-It, Get Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Build, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:19:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantSteve/pseuds/AdamantSteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle of New York, Clint's not doing so great. Is the great big black dog he keeps seeing real or imaginary?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chance and a Black Dog

**Author's Note:**

> Originally begun for Trope Bingo before it turned into a sprawling saga full of feelings. 
> 
> Beta read by Dunicha, JumpieJamie and EragonSaphira at various points, and subsequently jiggled about again by me, so any remaining mistakes are all on me.
> 
> Check end-notes for spoilery information regarding werewolves and potential trigger warningy stuff.

Clint thinks he's seeing things the first time. 

 

Not long after New York, he's sitting on the windowsill of his 6th floor walk-up, watching the empty street at 4.30 in the morning and sees a dog. 

 

It’s big and black and all alone, and it seems unreal when it turns its head to look right at Clint, 6 stories above. It stays there for a long moment, long enough to have Clint reaching for the binoculars he keeps by the window, but when he turns back the dog is gone. He sighs and laughs to himself. He's really losing it.

 

Phil turns out to be alive, which eases a pressure Clint hadn't quite let himself realise was there. He gives them all crap, especially Clint, and it's not long before he's back at work, running operations from the office Fury had conspicuously left unchanged in his absence, though slower now, and he’s only in the office three times a week. Clint's honestly not all that surprised about it, but then, he's not surprised about a lot of things lately. Even the most shocking things feel dulled, as though they're a few layers removed, like Clint's wrapped in blankets which soften everything around him but don't offer any sort of warmth. 

 

He sees the dog again when he's walking around one night. It's too cold for the thin t-shirt he's wearing, but finding a jacket seemed like too much effort for an aimless walk to nowhere. Up close, the dog is huge, practically a wolf, mostly black with flecks of brown in its shaggy coat. It comes right up to him and growls, a deep resonant sound that could be a subway train far below the empty streets. Clint backs away and the wolf-dog advances, teeth showing, so he turns and walks back the way he came. The dog keeps pace beside him and stops its growling, only starting again when Clint passes by his apartment.  He steps back towards his front door and the dog stops again, sitting and watching him with ears pricked. "You're a fuckin' weird dog," Clint mutters as he goes back inside. The dog's still there when he looks out the window.

 

Things start to get better. The team's more of a team. Even Natasha's easier with her smiles. When Clint laughs at whatever Tony's done to have Phil swearing under his breath so only Clint can hear it, he feels the accompanying bloom of warmth in his gut that he'd almost forgotten. Phil smiles at him as though he knows, and then Clint says something snarky and juvenile. 

 

It's good having Phil back on comms and back in the briefing room shutting down Stark and Fury before they can derail things with petty squabbling. It finally feels like a real team, as laughable as that thought was when Phil had started putting it together. 

 

Clint sees the dog again, out at night when he can't sleep again. He’s dressed appropriately this time, which seems to please the dog, and it decides to walk in step with Clint rather than growl him back to his apartment. He finds a piece of wood next to a trash can and throws it ahead of them, and somehow it almost manages to look unimpressed. They keep walking, and when they get to the stick, Clint picks it up to throw it again, but the dog gently takes it from his hand and places it by another trash can, putting an end to Clint's attempt at a game.

"Alright, alright," Clint says, petting between its ears as they continue on. 

 

Soon the dog is waiting for him outside his apartment for their walks together most nights. Clint finds himself talking to it, that rhetorical one-sided conversation one only really has with animals, and it’s kind of nice. One night, he’s think-talking to the dog about getting a pet of his own, and the dog runs off like Clint’s offended it. Weirdo.

 

The dog looks unimpressed at the dog food Clint buys it, but when he buys a hotdog, it eats that. 

 

It gets so Clint is glad of the company.

 

A mission goes south and Clint ends up stuck in the cold for a few days, resulting in a pretty nasty chest infection. He’s sent home on Doctor’s orders and sleeps for a few days, waking up with a hacking cough. He wraps his comforter around him to shuffle out to the kitchen for some whiskey - a carnie’s best medicine. He sits on the couch and looks at the switched off TV as though he’s watching it, and something catches his eye at the window. 

 

There on the fire escape is the shape of the big black dog, its ear twitching as it sleeps. Clint’s not sure how it got up here in the first place, but he opens the window to bring it inside, cause it’s a cold night and he’s worried about it. 

 

At the sound of the window, the dog wakes up, jumping into a defensive stance with its tail between its legs. “Easy, easy,” Clint says, hands open and out in supplication. “You wanna come in, boy?” No sooner has he said it than the dog is gone, tail whipping against the guardrails of the fire escape as it runs away.

 

Clint goes back to bed and assumes it was a dream, but the next night the dog is there again, and when Clint opens the window, it doesn’t run. It won’t come in but it lets Clint pet it, sitting on the windowsill leaning out to bury his fingers in the thick, warm fur on its neck. “It’s cold, don’t you have someplace to go?” Clint asks, but the dog curls up and goes back to sleep, seemingly content to stay where it is.

 

The chest infection is stubborn, and the cold weather that manages to creep into Clint’s admittedly drafty apartment doesn’t help much. Maybe he’s a hipster, maybe he should go live somewhere fancier, but he likes this place, dammit, with its high-up views and crotchety old neighbours. And now this great big dog that’s taken up residence on the fire escape. 

 

It still refuses to come in despite the offers of hot dogs that Clint brandishes in its direction, til one night when he wakes up, wheezing and unable to breathe, and it does come in after all, facing him down til he goes back to bed and then curling up in the doorway. Clint is out like a light after that, waking in the morning to find the dog gone and the window closed. Perhaps it was a fever dream.

 

A SHIELD doctor comes by and checks on him, doing the whole stethoscope ‘now cough’ thing, which Clint hates - her hands are so cold and clinical when all he really wants is his warm bed and a trashy novel to read.

 

The dog comes again, on its usual perch on the windowsill, watching Clint and submitting to the friendly strokes Clint offers. He manages to lure it in again, and it shoos him back into his bedroom like before, this time only leaving when Clint’s taken his pills and washed them down with a glass of water. Clint’s too tired to follow and close the window, but it’s not open when he wakes up, and he thinks maybe he is losing it, but he doesn’t really mind.

 

The infection clears up pretty sharply after the new medication, with a possibly-imaginary dog watching to make sure he takes his pills every day. He’s soon back on active duty, too, though it’ll be a long while til that’s any sort of normal. Other people at SHIELD are pretty good with him and the others that Loki enthralled, but whether or not it’s intentional, there’s still a disconnect and an otherness to them, and it’s a discomfort that’s only very slowly starting to ease. 

 

Phil looks startled to see him when Clint turns up on his doorstep one day, a can of chicken noodle soup in hand. He looks pretty good, all told. Clint says so, and Phil smiles a little bashfully (perhaps) and it’s so unexpected and so nice that Clint toes off his shoes without being told and makes himself at home. 

 

Turns out Phil’s just as busy at home as he is at work, paperwork mostly, some planning and a lot of archival stuff that’s not too taxing - and physical therapy, Clint assumes, sipping his tea politely even though he kind of hates tea. He’s a coffee man, and Phil says sorry for not having anything stronger, only he’s not allowed, and he says that the same way he talks about the archiving and the PT - like it’s a chore and an embarrassment. 

 

Clint tells him about his own embarrassment - about the dog he’s not completely sure is real, and he describes it to Phil, who’s less skeptical than he’d expected, but then, they live in a strange world where anything is possible, now.

 

Clint asks about the treatments they gave Phil, because SHIELD have all sorts of strange toys - every time he’s been to medical they’re trying to have him sign waivers and NDAs for weird new procedures, most of which Clint refuses. Phil chuckles and says it’s classified, but well, he did die, and he is alive. 

“So...” he says, raising his eyebrows and shrugging an end to it. 

“Was it vampire blood?” Clint teases, getting an eyeroll and a fond smile out of Phil. 

“Like I said. Classified.” 

“Werewolf? Alien? Did they put Captain America juice in you?”

“Captain America juice?” 

 

It’s new, the way Phil looks at Clint for a long beat, and Clint gets the impression perhaps he’s wanted to look at Clint like this before but stopped himself. His head is tipped slightly to one side, like he’s considering something, and Clint’s about to comment on it, ask if there’s something in his teeth, but then Phil looks away and huffs in amusement - just a little breath of a laugh, but something Clint’s longed to hear again. The sound of his handler over the comms. The sound touches something inside him and unlocks a warmth that slowly seeps into all the bits of Clint’s brain that had felt cold.  

 

He wants to ask about the scar, because it’s morbid and it’s what Clint does - pokes at peoples sore spots til they tell him exactly where their boundaries lie, but then it’s time to go, and Clint’s shoes go back on and the mug of cold tea is taken from his hands. Phil tips his head to one side a few degrees again, but he doesn’t say anything in the end, and Clint knocks his knuckles against the doorframe before not saying anything either. 

 

-

 

Clint raps his knuckles against Coulson’s office door the next time he sees he’s in, and tells him the copy machine’s doing the thing again, though Clint doesn’t know what the copy machine’s thing is, it was just something he heard one of the admins saying on his way through what probably used to be the steno pool. It’s an obvious excuse to come talk to Phil, but thankfully he doesn’t say so, just glances at the clock and then nods decisively to himself. 

“Would you like to get lunch?” Phil asks, and Clint’s surprised at how easy that was. He didn’t even have to work his way up to and around it, and he’d come up with all sorts of roundabout ways of tricking Phil into eating with him on the way up here.

 

“Sure,” Clint replies, shrugging. “It’s meatloaf day.” 

Phil nods consideringly before logging out of his computer and standing up. “Or we could go somewhere?” 

 

Which is how they end up eating burgers off-base, sharing a basket of fries. Clint’s a ketchup all over kind of guy, but Phil shakes his head - “you put it all over and you can’t regulate the ketchup,” he says, squirting a neat blob in one corner before taking a fry and dipping it in.

“Regulate the ketchup,” Clint echoes, laughing. “I missed you, Coulson.” 

 

Clint’s never seen Phil eat so much - two thick beef patties that get wolfed down along with the fries, though most of the bun gets left on the plate. Clint can barely make it through his whole single burger, and when it looks like he’s not going to eat it, Phil not so subtly eyes it til Clint passes it over. 

 

“You really like these burgers, huh?” 

 

Phil dabs at his mouth after chewing the last bite of Clint’s burger. “Yes! I’m hungry a lot of the time lately. Recovering I guess,” he says, gesturing vaguely to his chest. “Burns up a lot of calories.” 

 

Clint watches him wipe his mouth before crumpling the napkin atop his empty bread buns. “I really wanna know what they did, man.” 

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Phil says cheerily, signalling for the waitress to bring them their bill. 

 

-

 

Clint cleans his apartment the next weekend, and it’s only once he’s started to move things around and tidy up that he realises just how grimy the place had gotten. The bathroom is caked in months-worth of soap scum, the dishes in the kitchen are a sorry, crusty sight. He hasn’t changed his bedding in forever, and there’s so much washing it’s built up into a small mountain in one corner of Clint’s bedroom.

 

He goes through it all, the radio blaring as he wipes and scrubs and sorts clothes. It’s nice to be so lost in something mundane, and when he’s done, hours later, Clint feels like he’s cleansed himself at the same time, even though he’s more exhausted than he feels like he ought to be. 

 

He thinks about ordering delivery, but it seems a shame to let his now spotless kitchen go unused, and goes to the grocery store instead, buying the ingredients for a simple pasta sauce and then making it, sitting at the breakfast bar like a regular person, even eating off of a plate. 

 

He watches SNL reruns on TV, feeling his body sink into the vacuum-cleaned seat cushions and dozing off when there’s a sound at the window, and Clint looks up to see the dog sitting out on the fire escape, watching him. He opens the window and gestures to the room. “You’re welcome to come in, you know,” he tells it.

 

The dog cocks its head slightly to one side as it looks at him, as if considering how smart an idea that would be. Clint shrugs and sits there, petting the dog til it sits on the fire escape and actually rolls over, and Clint pets its neck and its belly, losing himself to the warmth that stroking an animal gives. He’s looking out over the street at the lit up windows when his hand catches on something, and the dog makes a yelp and then jumps up, and Clint’s barely realised what’s happened when the dog’s already off, halfway down the fire escape. It must’ve been a scar or a scab or something, Clint thinks, since his fingers are clean. Perhaps a tick that he accidentally nudged. Fuck if he knows, he’s never really had a dog before. 

 

\--

 

The dog stays friendly, and Clint tries to see if there really is some kind of wound, since it seems like he ought to get it checked out if there is, but the dog’s wary of him touching there now. Clint feeds it hotdogs out the window, and one day, it comes inside. It just sniffs around and then looks in Clint’s bedroom before huffing and jumping back to it’s place on the fire escape, but it stays there whilst Clint watches a movie and eats homemade pizza (from scratch!) 

 

And Clint sees Phil at work. They eat lunch. They talk. It’s not a thing, ok? Clint’s just glad Phil’s alright, and it’s good for the environment to take one car to a lunch place than two. 

 

Clint walks into the gym for his thrice-weekly weight workout and finds Phil there, sweating and lifting far more than Clint can remember him lifting before. “Totally super serum,” Clint says on his way past. Phil sticks out his tongue.

 

It’s late one night and Clint genuinely happens to be going past Phil’s office, taking a requisition form to put it in the place forms are meant to go, when he notices Phil’s there later than usual. Well, later than usual for these days. It used to be that Phil would always be here at any hour of the day, but what with Fury’s ‘get your ass home’ policy (which mostly applies to Coulson, but sometimes extends to other injured agents when they’re being particularly hardheaded (so, Clint, then)) Phil’s usually home by now.

 

Clint says as much, and startles Phil, who glances out the window and cringes before checking the time on his watch. “Shit. Fuck! I didn’t realise what the time was. Thank you, Barton.” 

 

Clint shrugs. “I just have to drop this off,” he says, waving the forms, “and I can give you a ride home if you want. Or we could get dinner?” 

 

“Sure,” Phil replies, making movements to shut down his workstation and pack things up. 

 

Clint drops off his forms and comes back, only to find Phil’s office door locked and the lights turned off. He tries not to feel too snubbed. 

 

-

 

“You notice anything weird about Coulson?” Clint asks Natasha one day on the range, because since Phil’s uncharacteristic rudeness for apparently no reason, he’s taken an interest in his doings. There’s a pattern to his days off and the timings, but he can’t work out what it is, and it’s one thing to spy on someone, and an entirely different department that actually makes graphs and charts and shit, so Clint’s mostly in the dark. 

Natasha looses an arrow and it hits just off of the very middle of the target. She swears. “Maybe,” she says. 

Clint looks at her askance. Natasha’s not a maybe kind of girl. Natasha is yes or no, at least where Clint is concerned. Natasha doesn’t trade in maybes with her friends. 

 

“Maybe?” 

She puts down her bow and pulls off her armguards. “You think they did something to him.” 

“Maybe.”

 

-

 

It’s nice having Natasha in his space again, Clint thinks, watching her peeling potatoes in his little kitchenette. There are papers scattered about the place, covering the coffee table and stacked on the floor, and two laptops open running logistical programmes or something - things Clint certainly doesn’t understand and he’s only half sure Natasha does. There’s a piece of cardboard written on in thick black marker, listing all of their most extreme theories. Vampire is top of the list, followed by Chitauri shapeshifter, angel, demon, superserum, clone, and so on.

 

Clint glances out the window when there’s a movement, and grabs Natasha’s arm. “There! The dog! You see it, right?” 

Natasha puts down her knife (she doesn’t use a potato peeler - too bourgeois) and watches as Clint rushes over to open the window.

 

The dog tips its head and looks between them, steadfastly staying just out of Clint’s reach. Clint looks over to read Natasha’s expression (narrowed eyes) and then, when he looks back, the dog is gone, slap slap slapping its tail on the railings. 

 

Clint sighs and comes over to grate cheese some more (he’s bourgeois enough to use a grater). 

“So that’s the dog, huh?” Natasha asks. She still hasn’t picked the knife back up and is now looking at their piles and piles of nonsensical hypotheses and research. 

 

“I have another theory,” she says.

 

-

 

“This isn’t Twilight, Tasha!”

“It’s a theory! I let you have…” she gestures at the cardboard. “‘ _is Jesus_ ’.”

“That’s still more likely than, fuckin’, werewolf!”

“When did that dog start coming here?” she says, like that’s point one on what’s sure to be an irrefutable list of truths. She does this sometimes, and it’s always both painful and enlightening.

Defeated already, Clint sighs. “Not long before we knew Phil was alive.” 

“And the dog acts weird, right? You said it wouldn’t play with you, won’t eat dog food?” 

Clint clenches his jaw. “Yeah.” 

“So.” 

 

Clint looks at her and she raises an eyebrow. 

 

So.

 

-

 

 _‘So’_ isn’t good enough for either of them really, and hell, they are spies, so they dig some more. There’s no proof Phil _isn’t_ a werewolf. And now that he thinks about it, it makes as much sense as anything else in his life. 

 

One evening, full of homemade chicken cacciatore, Clint’s thinking about positing the theory to Phil as a joke to see if his nostrils will flare, which is a tell Clint learned on their very first mission together, when there’s a telltale movement at the window.

 

Clint opens the window and the dog flops down onto the grate. “Hey, hey,” Clint says, reaching out to pet it and flinching away when the dog yelps at the contact. Pulling his hand back in, Clint realises the dog is bleeding. 

 

“Get in here, idiot,” he mutters, looking out properly to try and see just how badly the dog is hurt so he doesn’t make anything worse by getting it inside. Even if it isn’t Phil, Clint’s really started to care about the thing, and he’s careful as he heaves the dog’s bulky weight into his apartment. 

 

In the light of the room, it’s clear the dog (Phil? Clint feels weird thinking of it by that name, even though the way it’s looking at him reminds him so much of the man) was in a fight with another dog by the looks of it. 

 

Clint grabs towels and a basin from the bathroom, filling the basin in the kitchen where he can better keep an eye on the dog. “C’mon pal,” he says, petting the side of the dog’s head that doesn’t have blood slicking down the fur. It looks like whatever bleeding was happening has mostly stopped, blood thickening to mat down the fur. As Clint cleans him up, it seems to mostly be light scratches, and for once he feels vindicated that his insistence at tending his own wounds might come in handy after all.

 

 _Ok,_ Clint thinks to himself when the dog’s as comfortable as he thinks he can make it. _Maybe this is my boss, maybe it’s just a weird dog, maybe I’m crazy or maybe it’s a little of all three._ It ought to make him feel weirder than it does, but the weight of the dog when it lopes over to slump right next to him is so comforting that all it feels is _nice_. 

 

He almost drifts off right there on the floor, and catches himself nodding forward a couple of times before finally getting up and getting ready for bed. The dog makes a small pained sound when Clint moves, and for a moment Clint thinks he’s hurt it, but it’s just looking at him with puppydog eyes that ought not to be so affecting in such a great hulking beast. 

 

He gets into bed and watches the dog from the doorway as it looks between him and the half-open window as if it’s trying to make up its mind. “Get in here, idiot,” he says, and isn’t surprised when the dog hustles in and jumps right onto the bed. 

“Jesus, alright,” Clint says, rearranging himself so there’s space for the dog to lay out on its good side.

 

It ought to feel weird, Clint thinks, eyes sliding closed at the same time as his fingers thread through soft fur, but it doesn’t feel weird at all. 

 

-

 

Clint wakes up the next morning when someone makes a noise next to him in bed, and Clint doesn’t remember -- _oh right. Oh! Right!_ His eyes flick open and he very carefully turns over to see just what (or who) is on the other side of the bed. 

 

Clint goes through a spectrum of emotions, each one tempered by the fact that he experiences each in silence. First is surprise, eyebrows raised and an inhale of breath; next a grin. Then concern as Clint takes in the scratches down the side of Phil’s face and the bruise around his temple which already looks a week old. There are scars here and there, the worst of which is a deep pink groove right in the middle of his back, shiny and raw looking, and Clint’s brow knits as he takes that in.

But then his eyes travel lower and take in the curve of the man’s ass, so Clint bites his lip, and then he spies the tattoo half hidden by a pillow and his face goes back to surprise.

 

He’s so happy. 

 

The clock says 8.03, and Clint ought to be getting up and going to work, but hell, there’s a naked man in (well, on) his bed. Extenuating circumstances. 

 

Phil shifts in his sleep and turns further into Clint, body nudging up against Clint’s side and letting Clint see a little more of the tattoo on his shoulder, black and a little blurred with time. It looks like a shield, Clint thinks, though he can’t be sure. Maybe a family crest. 

 

Clint’s torn between waking the man up and staying like this forever, making sure he gets a good night’s sleep, but then he feels kind of like a stalker, watching someone sleep like this, so with his heart in his mouth, he softly says, “Good morning.” 

 

Phil’s eyes snap open and go through the same sort of kaleidoscope of reactions as Clint’s did, finally settling on embarrassed panic. Clint reaches out a hand and then hesitates, deciding eventually to place it on Phil’s arm. “It’s ok. I figured it out before.” 

 

Phil looks down at himself, paling when he realises just how naked he is. Clint’s morning wood has been confused about the proceedings, but the glimpse Clint gets of Phil’s suggests his is in no doubt about what a good morning it is. 

 

“This looks bad,” Phil says, and all Clint can do is laugh.

 

-

 

Dressed in Clint’s clothes and sitting on the couch, Phil clasps his mug of coffee like it’ll float away if he doesn’t keep a hold on it. He explains as best he can, and it’s just what Clint and Natasha had extrapolated from the crumbs of information they pieced together themselves. There are actual werewolves, apparently, and Phil played guinea pig to the use of their blood. They heal, is the thing, much faster than regular animals, or people for that matter. And since it’s still new to Phil, any time he’s wounded he transforms and heals. Last night he got in a fight, he says, and then his wolf-brain, which isn’t quite as professional as his regular one, came here. 

 

Clint has all sorts of questions, but he figures there’ll be time for that soon enough.

 

Right now, he just wants to know one thing in particular, and he’s not sure how to ask it without closing up this new openness between them. He thinks he knows the answer already. Maybe.

 

“Did you start hanging around here because you were worried about me?” 

Phil studies his coffee and works his jaw, trying to form an answer by the look of things. Clint waits. “Yes,” Phil says in the end, flicking his eyes up to meet Clint’s. “I was worried about you.” 

 

Clint allows himself a small smile before he continues, and if it comes out a little bit grade-school, then he doesn’t really care. “Do you like me?” 

 

Phil actually laughs, just a little bit, and it’s not mean, just a warm breath of air and a beautiful smile when he glances up at Clint. “Yes. I do like you.” 

 

Clint comes over and pulls the mug from Phil’s hands. “Then we should date.” 

 

Phil looks caught between surprise and joy for the brief moment before Clint leans down to kiss him, but then he’s kissing back and reaching up, and he doesn’t complain when Clint crawls right into his lap for a better angle.

 

-

 

For their first date, Clint finds this place that sells meat by weight. He figures it’ll be a hit, but it’s still a shock to see Phil with grease dripping down his chin and his eyes closed as he tears into something that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of the Flintstones. 

 

“Good?” he asks once Phil seems to have come down from his meat-high. 

“I love this place!” Phil exclaims. 

Clint feels outdone by Phil’s ravenous appetite, but doesn’t complain when Phil orders a side order of sausages to round out the meal. 

“After the procedure,” he says, and that’s what he tends to refer to it as, ‘the procedure’, “I’m hungry all the time! Meat, mostly, but anything high in iron.”

“I noticed!” 

Phil gives him a smile before biting into a sausage.

 

They walk back to Clint’s house after, talking over the logistics of Phil’s new life. He doesn’t _have_ to change unless he’s injured and his biology takes over, except for the one night a month that it’s a full moon. That’s why he’d been rushing that time Clint had offered him a ride home.

 

He explains why he was there when Clint had first looked out the window. He’d been awake a few days, back in his skin, and they’d finally given him the files on New York. Everyone had different problems, of course, as was to be expected with something as world-changing as an alien invasion, but Clint’s file, whilst not particularly unusual by anyone else’s standards, felt off to Phil. As soon as he’d been allowed home, he’d turned-wolf and found himself there outside Clint’s building, just to make sure Clint was ok. 

 

“I didn’t really consciously plan to go to you, but it felt like something I had to do. A duty. And then you’d come out in your t-shirt when it was cold and…”

“I thought you were a figment of my imagination for a while.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be! I’m so happy that it was you.” Clint touches Phil’s shoulder to reaffirm that yes, he’s definitely alive, and whole, and here. Phil stops to look at him. “Always looking out for me.”

“It seems the least I can do,” Phil says, coming closer, one hand finding Clint’s and holding it. “Since you’ve always got my back.” 

 

Clint would usually say something funny, some charming thing before making a move, but Phil’s too quick for him, darting in and kissing him before he has the chance. Phil makes a little sound of pleasure in the back of his throat, as if this is just right, as if Clint’s exactly what he wants. He slides his arm around Phil and holds tight, and they stand like that on the street for a while, kissing slow and languid, fitting together just right. 

 

“So, would you like to come over? I won’t make you use the fire escape this time.” 

Phil smiles but doesn’t pull away, and Clint kisses his smile because he can. 

“I would love to.” 

 

-

 

As soon as they’re in the door, they’re kissing again, and without the propriety enforced by potential onlookers, Phil’s all hands. It’s a surprise that he’s so pro-active, though an extremely welcome one, and Clint gasps in pleasure when Phil slides a palm over the ridge of Clint’s cock in his jeans, plain as day about what he’s after. 

“Shit, Phil!” 

“Tell me what you like,” Phil says against Clint’s lips, nipping at them and grinning. “Please?” 

Clint tries to think - what does he like? But Phil’s grinding the heel of his palm against him and dragging his teeth over his neck and he can’t think beyond how much he likes _this_. 

“I like… bed.” 

It tickles when Phil chuckles against his skin, pulling back before pushing Clint towards the bedroom. 

“Phil, you’re so…” he gets cut off when Phil pushes him onto the bed. “Handsy.” 

Phil nods, like, of course he is. Like, what did Clint expect?

“I’ve waited a long time for you. I don’t wanna wait anymore.” 

 

“Ohh,” Clint pulls him close and kisses him again, cause he’s not sure how else to react to that.

Phil nips at his lips and then he’s all business, taking off his own shirt in a few swift movements before pulling at Clint’s, crawling over him to press their chests together, hands everywhere. Clint had been worried Phil would be self conscious about the scars, but he’s not, and when Clint touches his fingertips to them gingerly, Phil takes his hand to kiss it before pressing it against the marks. Clint’s about to say something else, but then Phil moves down to kiss him again. He’s a warm, solid, perfect weight against Clint, and Clint would stay like that forever if Phil wasn’t so determined to get them naked. He slithers down the bed away from Clint, taking his stealthily unbuttoned jeans with him so he can stand at the foot of the bed to step out of his own pants and look at Clint like he wants to eat him.

 

Clint finally figures out what he wants when Phil straightens up from where he’s bent down to peel off a sock to give Clint his first proper look at the positively juicy looking cock Phil’s been hiding under all his pressed suits. 

 

“Fuck me,” Clint says, reaching out and very nearly making grabby hands. “Come over here and-” 

“Really? You- really?” 

“Just come here.” He’s pleading and he can’t bring himself to mind how needy he sounds. “And stay? Will you stay the night, Phil?” 

Phil stops brushing his fingers over Clint’s ankle and looks so sweet for a moment. “Of course.” 

 

He crawls back up the bed, and they don’t manage to do much of anything before Clint’s tipped over the edge with a slick fingertip ghosting down the cleft of his ass and Phil’s other hand jerking him off. He’d be embarrassed, but Phil closes his eyes and licks up Clint’s cum as he jerks himself off further down the bed so he hardly seems to mind.

 

Clint practically has to wrestle with Phil to move him up the bed so he can do something slightly more useful than lay there and be licked clean, getting a hand and then his mouth around Phil’s dick before he comes, bucking with the tiniest movements as if he’s trying to hold back. 

 

After that, all Clint wants is Phil back in his arms, who’s still panting when he goes where Clint’s trying to put him. Clint wraps himself around Phil, one arm slung over his waist and legs tangled together. The taste of cum in his mouth is a welcome filthiness. Phil kisses him deep and slow, doing his best to wrap around Clint just as tightly. 

 

“I’m usually a little more put together when it comes to sex,” Phil says against Clint’s throat. Clint laughs. 

“Me too. I don’t usually come five minutes in.” 

Phil presses a kiss against Clint’s skin. “What’s your refractory period like?” 

“Oh god, do you have some kind of werewolf super-dick? Are you-” Clint shifts and sure enough there’s a hard length pressing against his hip.  “are you seriously hard again already?!” 

“Yeah… I’m having trouble controlling that.” 

“Oh my god.” 

 

Phil doesn’t make a move, seemingly content to keep clinging to Clint indefinitely. His subtle hip-shifting is rather pleasant, Clint decides, but he made a request earlier, and it seems like now’s as good a time as any for Phil to fulfil it.

“So, you really should fuck me. I mean, you don’t have to, but I… have kinda been thinking about the dick you’re wearing a groove into my hip with since I saw it the other day.” 

 

Phil groans against his neck and then bites it before moving, and Clint’s pretty sure there’s gonna be a mark. He hopes there is. 

 

Phil takes so long slicking Clint up and getting him ready that Clint’s hard again by the time Phil’s slid inside him. There’s no sting nor the ache of haste, just a warm weight filling him perfectly and Phil’s hands on his hips to hold him there. 

 

The hands move, short fingernails ghosting over the skin of Clint’s back before scratching their way back down. It makes Clint’s toes curl and his hips grind of their own accord, rubbing himself against the sheets before Phil grips them again. 

 

“So good,” Phil says, “God, you’re fucking perfect, Clint.” 

 

He preens as well as he can, pressed into the covers like this, because Phil’s praise has always made him feel like he’s in the middle of the circus’ ring, applause from every side. Phil’s movements speed up, pressing into Clint so perfectly til they’re both coming, Clint’s orgasm triggered as much by the idea of Phil’s, buried inside him. 

 

Phil stays put for a little while, til Clint’s not babbling nonsense or ineffectually trying to grab a hold of him. He goes off to the bathroom and returns with some tissue, though they both quickly decide the sheets only salvation will be the washing machine. They lay on them for a while though, til the draw of sleep is pulling at them too much to ignore. 

 

Clint sighs, feeling pretty gross when he stands up and stretches, feeling dried bodily fluids pull strangely at his skin. He finds new sheets and makes the bed before attempting to take the quickest shower he’s ever had. Phil still sneaks in beside him though, and it ends up being one of the longest. It’s after three in the morning when they finally slip into bed to sleep.

 

-

 

Clint wakes up to find Phil smiling at him and a cock hard and waiting under the sheets. Phil apologises but absolutely does not mean it, swallowing Clint’s kisses as Clint tosses back the covers to jerk him off. 

 

Phil reaches for him again, but since coming three times last night, his dick’s not really playing along.

“Later,” he promises, and Phil nods solemnly. 

“I might hold you to that.” 

 

-

 

“So,” Clint says over eggs and pancakes and bacon in the diner on the corner, after another two person shower that proved Phil’s mouth is actually magical. “When’s the next full moon?” 

 

Phil puts down his coffee and checks his phone. “Ten days. I usually run around near my apartment-” 

“Or stalk me.” 

“Or that.” 

“Well,” Clint says, scooping eggs onto a piece of bacon before popping it into his mouth. He’s so hungry; Phil’s attempts to drain his life-force via sex is already taking its toll. “Not to be too hasty or anything but you wanna do something? Like, we could go to one of the prettier safehouses, run around in the woods? I dunno, maybe it’d be nice?” 

“Are you asking me on a vacation, Clint?” 

Clint puts a huge mouthful of egg into his mouth and shrugs, taking a sudden interest in the goings on outside the window. He’s not good at this shit. 

 

Phil slides his hand into Clint’s across the table.

“That sounds perfect.” 

 

-

 

They do it, taking a long weekend to go ‘stargazing’. Phil lets Clint see him transform, which as prepared as Clint had been beforehand is still kind of terrifying to watch. Phil bounds away into the woodland by SHIELD’s most picturesque safehouse, leaving Clint with an empty set of clothes and all the unpacking to do. Clint’s sitting on the verandah overlooking the lake when Phil returns, running into the water before diving down and re-emerging in his grinning human form. 

 

“Having a good time?” Clint calls, and Phil grins before shaking his head as he walks up the bank, short hair spraying water in a very canine fashion. 

He leans down for a kiss. “The best time.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Phil is a werewolf! He's injured by other dogs at one point but not too badly. Clint is somewhat depressive throughout the beginning half of this story and doesn't care for himself very well. Nothing bad happens to him though.


End file.
